Wolf in Shadow-eARC (5 page)

“Oh, right,” said Rhian, “World War Two. We had to write an essay at school on how it felt to be bombed. Our history teacher said that the bombing of Germany by the American and British air forces was a great crime.”

“He did, did he?” said Frankie. “How politically correct of him. What did he have to say about the German bombing of London?”

“I don’t think that he mentioned that,” said Rhian.

“No,” said Frankie. “I don’t suppose he did.”

Their walk brought them to the edge of the park area and into the wilderness. They followed a path delineated by salvaged gravestones, which wound into thicker clumps of sycamore trees. The way was soon hemmed in by bushes lining the path like green walls. The sun was splintered into moving shafts of light by tree branches swaying in the breeze, and the scent of flowers filled the air. The soft buzz of insects flying from bloom to bloom was soporific. Occasionally a bird sang, and, if she looked carefully, Rhian could see grey squirrels in the branches. She stopped to trace a name with a forefinger on one of the stones that was in better condition than its fellows: Isaiah Fowler, 1852.

“See the dove, ascending,” said Frankie, kneeling beside her. “That symbolizes the deceased’s spirit reaching for heaven. Victorian gravestones are filled with hidden meaning, if you know how to decode them.”

“The next one has a dove swooping down,” said Rhian, teasingly. “Does that mean that the dead person was doomed to go to hell?”

“No, silly, that’s the Holy Spirit coming down from heaven to greet his soul. Come with me.”

Frankie searched and found an old stone, set a little way back from the path under a sycamore. She brushed away some dirt.

“I haven’t looked at this stone for ages. See the name here?” asked Frankie.

Rhian traced her finger across the letters. “E T H E L,-Ethel, but I can’t see a surname.”

“I don’t think they put one on the stone. What do you think this is?” Frankie pointed to a symbol above the name.

“It’s a tree,” said Rhian.

“A yew tree, to be precise. The Church claims that yew was the symbol of everlasting life, partly because yew trees regenerate and so seem to live forever, and partly because they are evergreen. That is why you always find them in churchyards. Yews certainly do live a long time; one in Scotland is thought to be two thousand years old. The yews were often there first before the Christian churches were built. Christians often built on pagan religious centers, and yews were sacred to druids.”

Rhian noticed that they were back to pagans and witchcraft again. Frankie seemed obsessed by the subject.

“Ethel was religious,” said Rhian.

“In a way,” said Frankie, smiling. “Do you notice anything else odd about the grave?”

Rhian considered. It was just another old grave in a tangled wilderness. An anomaly caught her eye. “All the graves are lined up the same way except this one.”

“Give the girl a house point.” Frankie mock-clapped her. “All the other graves are aligned east-west while Ethel’s is north-south. Christian graves point west because the ancient Egyptians believed that the spirit world was in the west beyond the setting sun. The grave alignment helped the dead person’s spirit on their way.”

“I never noticed that before,” said Rhian. “Why on earth should Christianity care about Ancient Egyptian beliefs?”

“Christianity has stolen bits from everyone. Don’t get me started on what they stole off the pagans—Christmas, for a start!”

Rhian started to speak, but Frankie talked over her.

“The grave is aligned north-south so that Ethel’s soul is trapped inside, preventing it from getting out and harming the living. Don’t you get it, Rhian? The yew is also a symbol of Hecate, the Queen of Magic. Ethel was almost certainly a witch, something that was still illegal in the nineteenth century. The vicar who buried her must have feared her spirit haunting him so he buried her north-south on consecrated ground.”

Rhian ran her hand across an old, weathered gouge in the stone.

“Shrapnel damage,” said Frankie. “I told you that the Germans kept bombing the cemetery. Perhaps Hitler feared witches as well.” Frankie laughed.

She pushed her glasses back on her nose, in what Rhian was coming to recognise as a characteristic gesture, and strode off, long skirt swishing around her legs. Rhian had to half run to keep up. The sycamores crowded ever closer on the path, shading it from the sun and dampening out the sounds of London.

Frankie finally stopped in a low-lying glade in the trees, a bowl filled with rich, wet soil. It was full of patches of mint plants, eight inches high with crinkly green leaves arranged in opposite pairs. Some of the plants had vertical spikes consisting of clusters of small purple flowers.

“I keep trying to grow mint but without success,” said Frankie. “It must be too dry or something in my garden.”

She picked a handful of stalks and placed them in her bag. Frankie carried a large earth-mother linen bag depicting flowers and fairies in pastel colors. It was just too chintzy to be true.

In the meantime, Rhian found another grave almost buried in the undergrowth. She cleared the vegetation to expose a horizontal gravestone decorated by a sculpture of a horse positioned on its stomach. Its head was bowed, like a much-loved animal waiting for a master that would never return. A century and a half of subsidence had caused the grave to tilt over. Rhian preferred not to speculate on what was responsible for the subsidence. The stone was decorated by a carved outline of a climbing plant covered in what could have been bunches of grapes.

“It’s another evergreen sign, this time symbolizing that the deceased will be remembered,” said Frankie, joining Rhian.

“There’s no name that I can see,” said Rhian. “I suppose that the people who vowed to remember are also dead and forgotten.”

A large drop of water fell on the stone in front of Rhian. More began to filter through the trees, pattering gently on the leaves.

“How irritating,” said Frankie, grimacing. “I packed some sandwiches and pies so that we could have a picnic.”

“That’s what you get for performing rain magic,” Rhian said.

“What rain magic?” Frankie asked, looking confused and a little worried.

“Planning a picnic, of course. It always works as a rain spell. My pub, that is, the pub where I work, is just around the corner,” said Rhian. “They don’t sell food, so I’m sure that Gary wouldn’t mind us eating our lunch there, provided we buy some drinks.”

“I’d love to see the Dirty Duck, honey,” said Frankie, with a broad smile.

“I believe Gary prefers to call it the Black Swan,” Rhian said.

“Really, he can’t be from round these parts, then,” Frankie said, dropping into a
faux
Wild West accent.

Thier labyrinthine route out terminated at a small gate in the cemetery wall on the side close by the Black Swan. Rhian had begun to have doubts about the wisdom of getting her home life mixed up with work. Still, it’s only a lunch, she thought, what can go wrong?

She sat Frankie down at a table near the window. Gary materialized beside her.

“Frankie, this is Gary, my boss; Gary, this is Frankie, my landlady,” said Rhian, introducing them.

“Can I get you drinks?” said Gary, eying Frankie speculatively.

“A glass of red wine, please,” said Frankie, giving Gary a wide smile.

Rhian settled for a Coke.

Gary walked back to the bar to get their drinks, swinging his legs over without bothering to open the hatch. Rhian narrowed her eyes. Gary had not normally been given to athletic gestures. She noticed that Frankie watched him all the way.

“Here you go, ladies,” said Gary, returning with the drinks.

Frankie handed some money over.

“You don’t mind if we eat our lunch here, do you, Gary?” Rhian asked.

“Of course not, Rhian. I don’t suppose that Old Fred or Willie the Dog mind either,” said Gary, gesturing to the only other customers.

Two old boys sat in the corner, sharing a packet of ten Woodbines while picking winners from the greyhound racing column at the back of a paper.

“Mind if I join you?” said Gary, when he brought back the change. He sat down without waiting for an answer.

“Please do,” said Frankie.

Rhian noticed to her horror that Frankie was flashing her eyes from side to side and patting her hair.

After lunch, the women tracked down the location of Frankie’s commission using Rhian’s
A to Z
. The office suite was in a low, rectangular, concrete-and-glass block built in the sixties. It reminded Rhian of her comprehensive school in Wales. The shower of rain had left dark grey streaks on the concrete, making the building look even more depressing than it would normally. Rust marks around cracks in the walls suggested that concrete rot would soon bring the block’s miserable existence to a close.

“They put people in corporate prisons and then wonder why the sickness rate is so high,” said Frankie, more to herself than Rhian.

Frankie rang a bell at the entrance, but nothing happened. After a while, she leaned on the button impatiently.

“All right, keep your hair on. I’ve only got one pair of hands.”

A blue-black peaked cap unlocked the glass door. Under the peak, a large grey moustache, stained yellow by cigarette smoke, jutted aggressively on the face of a gaunt, elderly man. He looked at them suspiciously through ancient National Health spectacles with round wire-framed lenses.

“We’re here to carry out some maintenance work on one of the office suites,” said Frankie. “It’s all arranged, look.”

She thrust a letter on headed notepaper at the caretaker, who peered at it myopically.

“No one told me,” he said. “You don’t look like plumbers.”

He gazed at the two women, suspiciously.

“Why don’t we look like plumbers? Women can do plumbing. Women can do anything men can do,” Frankie said, pugnaciously sticking out her chin.

“If you’re plumbers, then where’s your tools?” Peaked Cap said suspiciously, with the air of a man who had discovered the killer argument against Special Relativity.

Frankie opened her mouth, a dangerous glint in her eye.

“We don’t have tools because we are not plumbers,” Rhian said quickly, in an attempt to forestall further political debate.

“So why did you say you were plumbers?” he asked.

“I didn’t, you did,” said Frankie, her voice rising to a near shriek. “We are more in the office furnishings line. The letter instructs you to give us access to Unit Five, Ravion PLC.”

“Oh, curtains and things,” said Peaked Cap. “I suppose that is proper work for women.”

Frankie looked as if she was about to explode.

“You’d better come in,” he said, grudgingly. “It’s normally plumbers in this building. Sometimes, the leaks are so bad that the water runs down the stairs.”

The thought seemed to cheer him up.

The women followed him past the empty receptionist’s area. A bottle of scarlet nail varnish strategically placed in the middle of the empty desk conjured up an image to Rhian of a streaky-blonde with breasts that were too large and a workload too small, who was secretly lusted after by all the middle management.

“The lifts are switched off, so you’ll have to walk,” said Peaked Cap with grim satisfaction.

Ravion’s offices were on the top floor, but the climb was hardly onerous. There were only a couple of flights. Nevertheless, Peaked Cap made a three-course banquet of it. The company occupied the whole top floor behind a glass door. The caretaker finally unlocked it after trying several wrong keys first.

“Thank you,” said Frankie, firmly. “We can manage now.”

“I ought to stay and watch,” said the caretaker. “I’m in charge of security.”

“You have our letter of authorization,” Frankie said, firmly. “We must be left on our own while working—health and safety, you know.”

The caretaker allowed himself to be propelled out of the door. Frankie shut it decisively behind him. Health and safety, Rhian reflected, was the new religious mantra that allowed one to justify almost anything.

“I think that we will start by just walking around and sensing the vibes,” said Frankie.

The top floor was entirely glass-walled, so Rhian could see from one end to the other. Desks with computers and headsets were laid out in rows. Frankie walked through a reception area into an open-plan office occupying most of the floor. She paraded backwards and forwards, waving her arms theatrically and touching her forehead with the tips of her fingers. Rhian managed not to laugh.

“What do they do here?” asked Rhian.

“It’s a call center. I believe they give telephone advice on broadband installation or some such,” said Frankie, vaguely. “I’m surprised they haven’t bangalored it.”

Management and interview offices lined one of the walls, like glass cells for giant honeybees. A substantial double office at the end indicated the location of the chief executive and his secretary. Rhian touched one of the computer screens. Her finger sparked before contact with the plastic. She kicked the floor, reflexively.

“I’ve worked in stores with cheap, hard-wearing nylon carpets like this. Sometimes the static builds up so badly that your skirt sticks to your legs,” Rhian said.

The room was lit with fluorescent lights that flickered annoyingly at a rate just detectable to the human eye. One emitted an intermittent background buzz. Some of the office workers had attempted to personalize their working areas with photos or office toys but that merely emphasized the sheer inhumanity of the environment. The management had scattered potted plants around to improve the ambience, but they were doing badly. The one nearest Rhian showed every sign of being dead. The plastic in the new computers leaked organic vapours.

Rhian had only been in the office for ten minutes or so, but already her head ached. She rubbed her eyes and tried to open a window, but they were double glazed and sealed. The only fresh air came via an air conditioning system that smelled stale and metallic.

“Not feeling too well, honey? You seem very sensitive to auras,” Frankie looked at her.

“What exactly have you been hired to do here?” asked Rhian, deflecting the woman.